


with more heat and passion and light than he would have supposed them to contain

by a_novel_idea



Series: we need not be let alone [3]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Australia, Books, F/M, Fix-It, Hong Kong, Interviews, Jaegers, Kaiju, Kid Fic, Kids, M/M, Mechanics, Moving, Other, Raising a Daughter, Saving the World, sidney - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-01 17:39:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1046660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_novel_idea/pseuds/a_novel_idea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>It takes eight months to move PPDC Headquarters from Hong Kong to Sydney.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It isn’t easy, but it was never expected to be. The Chinese and Russian governments suddenly become beacons of hospitality and funds when Pentecost informs the rest of the world about the move. When nice words and money do not work, they turn to claiming ownership through citizenship. Pentecost does not take the tactic lying down.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. start a new book, and wait for the war to break

**Author's Note:**

> This took me a little while, and I want to thank somethingsomthing! S/he's been great with the feedback and support, and a few of the questions s/he asked pointed me in the right direction.
> 
> A/N: Guys, I am so sorry that I forgot to alter Avis's speech! I took care of it!

It takes eight months to move PPDC Headquarters from Hong Kong to Sydney.

It isn’t easy, but it was never expected to be. The Chinese and Russian governments suddenly become beacons of hospitality and funds when Pentecost informs the rest of the world about the move. When nice words and money do not work, they turn to claiming ownership through citizenship. Pentecost does not take the tactic lying down, and neither does Luca Hellwidge.

After being voted into office as the Prime Minister of Australia, Luca Hellwidge sets about to overhaul the system. Politicians are hired and fired, funds are rearranged, and all but one of Pentecost’s demands are met. She grants each Ranger and their families honorary citizenship of Australia, then dares those opposing to challenge her; she has the PPDC and the world’s two remaining Jaegers at her back. The Shatterdome becomes a sovereign state under the authority of the PPDC and Marshall Pentecost. The Marshall’s final demand is the hardest to meet.

“No publicity for a year,” Pentecost says. “That is our deal.”

“We don’t want publicity. We want a single interview with each Jaeger team,” Hellwidge says. “Thirty minutes, questions and answers, short and to the point. We have to give the world a glimpse of its heroes, Marshall.”

For all that he’s known the woman only months, Hellwidge has yet to falter on a promise, even if it leaves her in any kind of negative disposition. It is the Marshall that must draw the fine line between give and take.

“I get to approve the questions,” he says.

“Deal.”

***

“I don’t want to do the goddamn interview,” Chuck sulks.

He’s been standing over the bathroom sink for the last ten minutes brushing his teeth on autopilot. Raleigh, who’d collapsed back onto their bed after a shower, waves his hand at the open bathroom door and says,

“No one wants to do the interview.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Chuck continues to move the brush back and forth.

“Is this about Avis?” Raleigh asks.

“No,” Chuck spits into the sink. “Yes. I don’t want her exposed to all this shit. She hasn’t even started school yet. What are the other kids going to do when they see her on screen with us?”

Raleigh rolls off of the mattress and slinks into the bathroom. Chuck’s still only wearing his briefs, but Raleigh isn’t any more clothed. His dog tags clank when he moves, and they’re cold on Chuck’s back when Raleigh presses up against him.

“They’re going to think she’s a snob,” he says honestly, “that she thinks she’s better than everyone else. Then they’re going to talk to her, and she’s going to show them how smart she is, and she’ll make friends. You know she doesn’t give a damn about what you’ve done, just that you love her.”

“Fucking right I do,” Chuck says.

“That’s better. Now, if we don’t put our pants on we’re going to be late.”

Chuck rolls his eyes and Raleigh kisses him on the shoulder.

***

When Raleigh and Chuck finally show up in Conference Room One, their dress uniforms starched and buttoned into submission, they’re the last to arrive. Marshall Pentecost and Herc are quietly conversing, watching the interview crew set up their equipment. Sasha and Aleksis Kaidonovsky are playing a card game Raleigh doesn’t know, and the Weis are tossing a baseball between them; Raleigh suspects that if they had a basketball to begin with, the Marshall banned it from the presence of the cameras. Avis, dressed in a sky blue and royal purple sun dress with both Striker Eureka’s and Gypsy Danger’s insignias pinned to her back, is standing on a chair so Mako can braid her hair; Max is plopped over Mako’s feet. The Japanese national is wearing the female version of the dress uniform, and she looks ready to tear it off in her frustration with Avis’s hair.

Chuck snickers at her, earning him a glare that says he will most likely pay in some way or another later, and Mako lets him take over. Gypsy Danger’s pilots stand back and watch in fascination as Chuck undoes Mako’s work and tangles Avis’s hair into a rather elegant braid. Avis turns around and kisses Chuck on the nose before he can move away.

“In’t ma dress pre''y?” she asks as she hops off the chair. “Miss. Mori picked i' ou'.”

“Yes, sweetheart,” Chuck says.

“She e'en put ma pa'ches on fer meh,” Avis twirls around so the rest of the Rangers can see the labels again.

“Are you sure you’ve got to wear those?” he asks.

Raleigh and Mako find the disdainful look on Avis’s face amusing.

“O' course I do, Ducky.”

“I thought so. Did you eat breakfast?”

“Grandpa Herc an' th' Marshall fed me. I go' jello,” she says smugly.

“Of course you did.”

“Blue or green?” Raleigh asks, tugging on the end of her braid.

“Ling-Na made me red,” Avis says; Chuck smacks Raleigh’s hand away from her hair.

“Rangers,” Marshall Pentecost’s voice calls softly.

Chuck takes Avis to join his father, and Raleigh and Mako step forward together. The Kaidonovskys stow their deck of cards, and the Weis hand over their baseball. Each of them is pulled together like Raleigh has never seen them; there isn’t a hair out of place, or a shoe unshined. These are different people, he realizes, than the Jaeger pilots he saved the world with. These are the images the public demands to see, and if what they want to see after the near destruction of the world is a group of people that have their shit together and aren’t weighed down by nightmares, and PTSD, and scars, and paranoia, then this is all they have to give: an image.

The Marshall looks more pristine than usual, though the exhaustion in his frame is evident for those who know the signs. Pentecost has carried the weight of the PPDC, and of the world, for so long that convincing him to delegate less-important tasks has been a trial through fire. With Herc no longer preoccupied by piloting, he has been able to step up and take a few pounds from the Englishman, and Raleigh, Chuck and Mako have attempted to so the same. The relief shows on some days more than others.

“Today each Jaeger team will meet individually with Mrs. Vanera Ridgeback. She’s a veteran reporter for the Sydney News Network. She’s been given a list of questions she’s not allowed to ask; if we’ve missed anything on the list, feel free not to answer. After the initial interviews, we’ll break, and continue in the afternoon as a group. Any questions?”

“Wha’s fer lunch?” Avis pipes up.

The tension in the lot of them drains away, and Raleigh has a stray thought that maybe the girl isn’t as oblivious as she seems sometimes.

“You just ate breakfast,” Chuck says.

“An' I wan' t' know wha’s fer lunch.”

“Peas and carrots,” Raleigh says, and Avis pretends to gag.

***

“Rangers Becket and Mori?” a small voice calls.

The person leaning into the room is a small man, tall and thin, but holding no real presence. He’s jiggling a clipboard in his hand, and looking back and forth between Raleigh and Mako. They stand together, don’t bother to straighten their uniforms, and head towards the door. Chuck jeers from behind them, and Raleigh blows him a cheeky kiss when the reporter’s aide steps away from the door. Avis laughs and Chuck flips him off.

The trip down the hall to Conference Room Three is short. Mako’s heels are tapping with every step, and Raleigh remembers why he hates these things, dressing up in clothes he’d never wear to impress whoever was next in line to fund the Jaeger projects. When Yancy was still alive, they’d put on their dress unis and have to schmooze reporters and politicians, and whatever delegation was present that week. They’d usually be able to sneak out for a smoke or two, but he doesn’t think that would go well if he tried it this time.

Conference Room Three has been made a little more personal: the long table and uncomfortable chairs have been removed, and replaces with a couch and a few plush chairs. The lights have been dimmed to the proper side of comfortable, instead of the overly harsh bright white most of the Shatterdome screams of. There’s only one person in the room, and Raleigh assumes it’s Vanera Ridgeback. She’s older than he pictured (though, honestly, most of the reporters that he and Yancy did interviews with fit the same stereotype: blonde, pretty, and figured), with salted red hair, and brown eyes. She looks like a real professional.

“Good morning,” she says, standing and offering her hand. “My name is Vanera Ridgeback. I’ll be conducting your interviews today.”

“Mako Mori,” Mako says, shaking her hand.

Raleigh does the same, “Raleigh Becket.”

“Shall we get started?”

Mako and Raleigh both take the couch, across from Ridgeback, and sit possibly closer than is warranted. Ridgeback, for all that she has to have noticed, doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. She picks her legal pad up from the low table between them and says,

“The camera will remain stationary, and record continuously. The footage is subject to approval by Marshall Pentecost, Prime Minister Hellwidge, and the legal executives at SNN before a public broadcast can be sanctioned. Do you both understand?”

They both do.

“I’d like to start at the beginning,” Ridgeback says. “Where were you on K-Day?”

***

K-Day is the end of Raleigh Becket’s world.


	2. life is missing the values of books and the truths that they teach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Three will probably be a few weeks coming, what with Thanks Giving coming. I'll get it up as soon as I can!

_It’s two o’clock in the morning when the phone rings._

_Raleigh and Yancy have been sitting in front of the television for six hours; they’d sent Jazmine to bed an hour into the broadcast, claiming they’d be right behind her for much needed sleep. They haven’t been able to look away since. San Francisco is gone. Demolished by some creature risen from the sea. It’s big, and ugly, and nothing the world could have dreamed of. Every news channel is telecasting live, constantly streaming the same information: no one knows where it came from, no one knows what it is, and no one knows how to stop it._

_It’s their neighbor on the phone, Mrs. Landly. She’s a young mother of twins, wife of an oil miner, but she’s sort of adopted the three Becket children since their mother passed away. It’s deathly quiet over the line after their habitual greetings, and Raleigh doesn’t know what to say to her, but he keeps the phone cradled against his ear. It’s late enough that her children must be asleep, they’re four year old girls, and her husband is somewhere off the coast on a mining rig in the middle of the ocean, has been for a week._

_“Raleigh, I don’t know what’s happening,” she whispers._

_“Have you watched the news?” he says._ “No one _knows what’s happening.”_

_She huffs a little laugh, and they fall back to silence._

_Two days later, Oakland burns._

***

_They keep Jazmine home from school indefinitely. She’s sulking because they won’t discuss the news with her, won’t let her go out to play with her friends, won’t let her listen to the radio, and the TV stays unplugged from the wall until she goes to sleep. She’s eleven, and her brothers want to keep her away from this, whatever this is, until they have answers. Jazmine has always been blunt with her questions, and neither of the boys have figured out how to answer the inevitable: what’s happening?_

_Mrs. Landly and her girls pretty much move in with the Beckets. It’s a little cramped, six of them in a two bedroom, two bathroom house that’s been falling into general disarray since Sophia Becket passed away, but it takes their mind off of other things. Yancy and Jazmine are reluctant at first, but Raleigh is adamant that the other family stay; Mrs. Landly has done nothing but try to help them out for the last four months, and if having an additional three people to worry over keeps her mind off of her husband, stuck in the middle of the sea, and her twins who will have to grow up with this travesty hanging over their heads, and general world chaos, then he means for her to stay as long as any of them can stand it._

_Yancy and Raleigh continue to report into work. Yancy works with one of Anchorage’s few construction companies, and it’s prime building season. In two months, when the temperatures dip again, the permafrost will take over and make construction impossible. He starts picking up extra shifts when a few of the night crew don’t bother to show up. Raleigh, at almost a complete opposite, has been working afternoon shifts at the public library, and nights at the gas station on the corner by their house. He likes the library, likes the quiet and the smell of books, and the organization of it all; the gas station is extra money for pretty much no work._

_They fall into a pattern for three days: Mrs. Landly does the house work, and the laundry, and the cooking; Jazmine watches the twins, does the school work that the other mother conjures up for her, and makes sure Mrs. Landly doesn’t catch the stove on fire because she got distracted again; Raleigh and Yancy pick up every shift they can take to pay the bills. It’s a system that only seems to work because all six of them are never in the house at one time._

***

_On the fifth day, the American government manages to stop the ‘Trespasser’, as it’s been dubbed by the media and other officials, by dropping a nuclear bomb on Sacramento. The bomb manages to destroy the monster, tear it to pieces and blow its insides all over the city. Its blood is acidic, they learn, and it boils the concrete and disintegrates the buildings; when the fluid mixes into the water, the rivers, the streams, the sewers, the whole south western water table, and flows out to the sea, it glows bright blue. In a sick, destructible way, Raleigh thinks it’s a beautiful phenomenon._

_The death count is devastating. A whopping one and a half billion are predicted dead, another million injured. Missing persons reports flood what local authorities are left, and the governor of California has to make the announcement that almost none of the families seeking solace will receive the help the so need. He declares marshal law in the state, and the National Guard is called into action; they institute a curfew for those under twenty-one that extends to the entire West Coast, but Yancy and Raleigh both ignore it._

_The Coast Guard of California pulls bodies and parts out of the water for weeks._

_Their lives continue. The Landlys return to their home to await the incoming ship carrying their husband and father. The house is quiet without them. Jazmine returns to school; she asks every question, gives voice to every reason and doubt that Raleigh and Yancy have both had over the last five days. They answer her questions as best they can, but, to the disappointment of them all, the most common and resounding answer is: we don’t know._

***

_Raleigh is laying in his bed; it’s a twin and about three inches too short, but they don’t have the money for anything else. Yancy is laying on his own bed across the room. He’s got a book clasped in his hand, and the small light over his bunk is the only thing illuminating the small space. They’ve been quiet for hours, which wouldn’t be normal, except it has been since the governmentally declared ‘K-Day.’ Neither of them have the voice for trivial things like which team will win whatever sporting event. They work to pay bills and put food on the table, to clothe Jazmine, and to take care of the two mortgages their mother left them._

_“Yance,” Raleigh whispers._

_“Mah,” his brother says, distracted as he always is by his book._

_“What if it happens again?”_

_“What?” Yancy asks. “What if what happens again?”_

_“What if another of those creatures comes back?”_

_“You are such a drag, kid,” Yancy sighs._

_“What are we gonna do? What if it’s Alaska next time?”_

_“What if there’s not a next time?”_

_“But what if there is?”_

_Yancy is quiet for a long time. He stares into the pages of his book, but Raleigh knows he’s not reading; Yancy has a bad habit of moving and making faces at the book he’s reading._

_“If it happens again,” Yancy says quietly, “there’s nothing we can do about it.”_

_Raleigh’s never wished harder in his life that that wouldn’t be true._

***

“When the world governments announced the launching of the PPDC, Yancy and I jumped at the chance to do something, anything that could keep it from happening again.”

Mako takes Raleigh’s hand into hers. She and Ridgeback are quiet, and the camera continues to film nearly five minutes of silent, still footage. Mako strokes small circles onto the back of his hand and Raleigh is, for the first time since they left Hong Kong, the sole focus of his partner’s attention. After the silence has reigned, and Raleigh’s breathing has returned to a normal, steady rate, and the threat of tears no longer looms on the edge, Ridgeback says quietly, very quietly,

“What about you, Ranger Mori? How did the Kaiju war begin for you?”

“The world has my story,” Mako says, thinking back to the day Onibaba attacked, to the day she became the international sensation as the child that survived against all odds: The Girl in the Blue Raincoat. “Let us honor Raleigh’s.”

***

When Raleigh and Mako emerge from Conference Room Three, Gypsy Danger’s newest pilot does not let her senior return to the other Rangers. She sends him away to his room with the promise that she will send Chuck; Mako knows that as much as her comfort would be welcome, Raleigh needs the understanding of someone who has not been in his head. As he disappears down the hall, Mako knows that wounds have been reopened, and that he will also be alright.

Mako reenters Conference Room One. The Hansens, the Weis, and Avis are still waiting. The Weis are tossing the baseball again and Avis is rereading _Fahrenheit 451_. Herc and Chuck are playing with the Kaidonovskys’ cards, though Chuck seems to be tossing them at his father out of boredom more than he’s paying attention to the game; Mako imagines that Sasha and Aleksis have wandered off into the bowels of the Shatterdome, where the media is not allowed, until the group interview in the afternoon.

“Chuck,” Mako says quietly.

Father and son look away from their game.

“Hey, Mako,” Chuck says. “Go well?”

Mako nods.

“Raleigh may need your assistance,” she says. “He is having a problem with his uniform.”

Mako makes sure to remain very polite, and downright stiff, aware that the same reporter’s aide is standing in the door, tapping his clipboard against the doorframe. Chuck slowly puts down his hand, and Herc has risen his eyebrows. 

“Serious problem?” he asks.

“Nothing that cannot be smoothed down with the right hand,” Mako says.

“He in his room?” Chuck asks.

“He is.”

“Mrs. Ridgeback is to speak to Rangers Hansen and Hansen next,” the aide protests. 

“Mrs. Ridgeback can speak to Rangers Wei, Wei, and Wei next,” Mako says in a voice so sweet that it brooks no argument and threatens livelihoods all at once. 

“Uh, yes ma’am.”

The Wei triplets nod to Mako, their signal that they will stall for the next hour or so, and follow the slight man out of the room.

“Is Raleigh okay?” Avis asks as Chuck leaves the room.

“He will be, Miss. Avis. Do not worry about that.”

***

When Chuck creaks their bedroom door open, the space is still dark. He doesn’t flip the light on. The door makes an awkward clank when it closes, but the light from the corridor was just enough to let him know that Raleigh is sitting on their bed, jacket undone and head leaned in his hands. It’s a pathetic sight, and one Chuck wants to remedy. He unbuttons his jacket slowly, and hangs it by the door, making noise enough that he knows he won’t startle his boyfriend. 

The Aussie takes a deep breath, and pushes into Raleigh’s space until he’s standing between the other man’s knees, despite the noise Raleigh makes when he’s touched. Chuck threads his fingers into blonde hair and Raleigh tucks his face into the sharp bone of Chuck’s hip; he doesn’t think he’s imagining the feeling of wet fabric clinging to his skin. 

Chuck leaves Raleigh asleep in their bed, his uniform on a hangar, and tucked into his favorite ugly sweater. He’ll leave him there until the break before the group interview. Chuck will make him eat something, and he’ll grumble because he still hasn’t reached his pre-Knifehead weight, but they’re working on it.


	3. do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore

Chuck wakes Raleigh up thirty minutes before they’re supposed to report to Conference Room One for the last interview of the day. He’s sleep soft and warm and is covered by that sluggish haze that only affects the participants of the weary and exhausted sleep. Chuck hangs his jacket and his shirt next to Raleigh’s uniform and slides onto the bed. Raleigh rolls over and slings his arm around Chuck, tucks his head into his shoulder, sighs. 

“Avis wanted to bring you jello.”

Raleigh huffs a laugh and says, “One day, we’re going to have to explain that jello won’t fix everything.”

His voice is scratchy, dry, and Chuck imagines his throat is probably sore. Chuck wants to tell him that he’ll make everything better, all the hurt and the wounds and the burns, with jello if that’s what it takes.

“We have to be back in the Conference Room in half an hour,” he says instead.

“Yeah,” Raleigh says. “I know.”

“Ridgeback isn’t bad, for a reporter,” Chuck says. “Well, I don’t want to punch her in the face as soon as I walk in the room.”

“That’s an improvement,” Raleigh mumbles, grinning into the fabric of Chuck’s skin.

“Shut up,” Chuck says, but he got the response that he wanted; he’ll take the road of humorous self-deprecation if it can lighten Raleigh’s mood.

Raleigh rolls over Chuck, slips off the mattress, and sidles into the bathroom. Chuck enjoys watching him go.  
When Raleigh comes back out of the bathroom his hair is back in order and he seems to be more alert and put together. He’s washed his face and if Chuck hadn’t known of the day’s earlier circumstances, he never would have guessed that the American was upset at all. It’s almost refreshing, to see Raleigh look more like his normal self, but Chuck knows it’s irrefutably fake. 

Chuck sits up, wraps his arms around Raleigh’s thighs when the American slips into his space. He rests his chin on Raleigh’s belly, and flutters his eyelashes. Raleigh laughs. They rest against each other, Raleigh’s fingers brushing through Chuck’s hair like he’s some kind of pet, until Chuck feels they need to move, lest they decide to skip the group interview and stay in bed. Raleigh drags his uniform shirt out from under his jacket and stuffs himself back into it. The fabric smoothes out, and Chuck has the stray thought that whoever tailored the American’s uniform is magnificent at their job.

“I feel like shit,” Raleigh mumbles as Chuck straightens the lapels on his jacket.

“You look like shit, too,” the Aussie says.

“Thanks, babe.”

“Don’t,” Chuck pinches him on the thigh, “call me babe.”

The corner of Raleigh’s mouth hooks up in the imitation of a smile, and Chuck kisses it away. It’s still there when they leave the room.

***

When the two of them reenter Conference Room One, no one acknowledges their absence. Raleigh’s grateful that the other Rangers treat him as if he were whole and unchipped, and not sewing his edges back together. Avis is at the table with a chess board set squarely between her and Mako. Their mid-game, but Raleigh can’t tell who’s winning, never mind what’s actually going on. Every once in a while Herc leans over to whisper in Avis’s ear, and Mako discretely kicks him under the table; Max whines every time she moves her foot out from under his chest.

The Weis have abandoned their uniform jackets and have rediscovered the basketball the Marshall took from them before the interviews started. There isn’t much space to play in in the Conference Room, but they manage the same trick throws, twists and turns without hitting anyone or knocking over the chess pieces on the table. The Kaidonovskys are still playing with their cards, tossing them here and there, and occasionally sticking out an odd limb or two to try and unbalance the triplets. 

“Rangers, it’s time,” Marshall Pentecost says from the doorway.

They quietly put their things away, the cards, the ball, the game, and the Weis fit back into their jackets as the rest of them take turns straightening each other out. Avis brushes the imaginary dirt off of her dress and huffs about wanting to change shoes. Chuck promises her double the jello for an after dinner desert if she can go the entire interview without telling the people of the world so. 

Conference Room Three has been rearranged again, this time to hold a few tables pushed together and a seat for each of them. Each of the pilots takes a seat next to their counterpart, except for Chuck, who puts Avis in the chair between him and his father. It makes Raleigh smile when Chuck sits down and he can hold the Aussie’s hand under the cover of the table. Mako rolls her eyes, because she knows exactly what’s going on, and turns to give Max the attention he isn’t getting from Chuck.

Ridgeback comes into the room after them, followed by men with two more cameras. The crew set them up on stationary tripods, and Raleigh assumes there won’t be any extras privy to their questions and conversations until Pentecost and the editorial team at SSN approve of the footage. When they leave, Ridgeback takes her seat in the same plush chair from before and flips open a new page on her notepad. She nods at the Marshall, and the Marshall nods at her, and the only people left are the Rangers, Avis, and Ridgeback.

“Hello, again,” she says pleasantly. “I trust your break went well.”

“Yes, thank you.” Herc says, and the pleasantry in the man’s voice sets the rest of the room to a soft rhythm. This won’t be a harsh, stop and go narration of things they don’t want to talk about. 

“Good,” she says, and seems genuinely happy that they were not inconvenienced by the previous interviews. 

“Let’s start with introductions,” she says. “We have Rangers Wei, Wei, and Wei, who piloted the only three-armed Jaeger, Crimson Typhoon; Rangers Kaidonovsky and Kaidonovsky, who piloted the oldest Mach One still in service at the time of Operation Pitfall, Cherno Alpha; Rangers Becket and Mori, who piloted the resurrected beauty, Gypsy Danger; and Rangers Hansen and Hansen, our home-grown heroes who sacrificed the world’s only Mach Five, Striker Eureka, to the Breach on the day of its destruction.”

Raleigh doesn’t miss the blush that paints Chuck’s face when Ridgeback calls him and Herc out on the sacrifices they’d made under the water. She looks around at the lot of them, surveys their expressions, their postures, then turns to Avis.

“And you, little miss, are someone the world doesn’t know. Would you care to introduce yourself?”

Avis seems to shrink three sizes as she looks up at Chuck. She twists her fingers in her hair and doesn’t say anything. 

“ _Now_ is when you get tongue tied?” Chuck asks quietly. 

She shrugs at him.

“Be polite, and give her your name.”

Herc snorts when Chuck tells her to mind her manners.

“Mah name is Avis Oswyn Feeley,” Avis says quietly.

Raleigh thinks it’s adorable that she can be so subdued with just the audience of a single woman.

“Who’s your favorite Jaeger, Avis?”

“Gypsy Danger,” she says, “an' Striker, too.”

“Do you like one better than the other?”

Avis shakes her head. Chuck nudges her with his elbow; Avis elbows him back with an indignant look on her face, and it causes Ridgeback to smile.

“I li'e Gypsy Danger be''er,” Avis says clearly. 

“Gypsy Danger’s a good Jaeger,” Ridgeback agrees.

The questions stall for the moment, and Ridgeback glances down at her notes for the first time Raleigh’s seen. He can’t imagine why she needs them; she’s been so good at asking the next, natural question that he hasn’t thought of her planning them out. He appreciates that they’ve been saddled with a journalist who actually knows what she’s doing, not someone who looks good on camera and could potentially get the juicy news out of the mostly male, and extremely exhausted, Rangers.

The questions come, and the Rangers answer the best they can, pulling each other out of the tight spots they manage to talk themselves into, and stories they’d rather not remember, and distracting from the inquiries all together with anecdotes that are completely off subject. They’re masters at this; each of the pilots have been doing this for years, with the exception of Mako, who lived through her own media exposure for months after Onibaba ate a bit of Japan. 

The Weis are funny, bouncing off of each other at each turn, and the Kaidonovskys are sharks, all witty remarks and sharp teases. Mako is at ease. Herc watches them over. Chuck focuses on Avis, pulling her out of her shell and back into the sassy little snark-box she is. Raleigh is more than happy to sit back and watch the others be themselves. 

When all but one of the questions have been retired, Ridgeback lets them settle for a moment before she launches into the last one.

“Seventeen Magazine, the American magazine for young women, is partially sponsoring this interview. Three months ago, they launched an online poll as to which Jaeger pilot was the ‘cutest’.”

Raleigh can practically see the quotation marks formed around the word as the reporter spits it out, and he can tell that the only reason she’s even asking the question is because Seventeen Magazine is giving the Sydney News Network money, and probably a lot of it, to do so.

“When the results came in, the Ranger with the most votes was, undeniably, Ranger Becket.”

Chuck’s reaction is the first; he snorts loudly, and delves into the deepest pits of laughter. Mako joins him. Herc is laughing, though not as hard as his son. Sasha is hiding behind her hands, and Aleksis is smoothing his beard and the smile from his mouth. The Weis are falling over each other in their attempts to reign themselves in. It’s a room of joy, and laughter, and a touch of humiliation for several minutes. Raleigh slumps in his seat and blushes. 

When the others in the room finally quiet down, Ridgeback continues,

“And the question most readers would like you to answer, Ranger Becket, is whether or not you are single.”

The question isn’t unexpected, but Raleigh doesn’t know how to answer. He is, without a doubt, Not-Single, but he and Chuck haven’t discussed if they want to tell the world so or not. The Aussie seems to sense his dilemma, and sets their clasped hands on the tabletop.

“Ranger Becket,” Chuck says, “is unmistakably Not-Single.”

***

On the third day after the interview, and two weeks before it airs on international television, Chuck makes an appointment with the dean of Braxton-Parish Private Academy to discuss Avis’s enrollment. He takes Raleigh with him because, if he’s honest with himself, Raleigh’s probably going to be here for a while, and he’d rather raise Avis with two parents than one. Raleigh agrees, a slow smile growing on his mouth as if he’s just now realizing that Chuck plans to keep him around. Chuck rolls his eyes, because the American can be daft, but tells his boyfriend to get dressed anyway.

They take one of the Jeeps the PPDC loans out to its personnel on their personal time, and Chuck drives. He knows the streets better, mostly because Raleigh almost refuses to leave the Shatterdome, and because the blonde cannot get used to driving on the opposite side of the street; they’d likely hit something on the way there if Raleigh drove. 

Braxton-Parish is an impressive school, for all that it only takes up half a square city block. It’s three stories tall, and red brick. The outside is untarnished by the graffiti that is usual on some of the other buildings, and the white marble steps are so white they’re probably kept that way with some outlandish cleaner made from the virgin tears of exotic maidens raised on the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro. It’s obviously an expensive place, posh on the inside, subtle on the outside, and it gives Raleigh the heebee-jeebies; this is the opposite of the public educational system he’d attended in a Kaiju-wrecked Alaska. 

“We did not get this kind of education in Alaska,” he comments, as they push through the front doors.

“Did you get _any_ education in Alaska?” Chuck teases.

“Some,” Raleigh says. “Didn’t graduate though.”

“What?”

“Charlie?” someone interrupts them. It’s a woman in her late twenties maybe, with short brown hair and bright blue eyes and a teacher’s identification badge hanging around her neck. “Charlie Hansen? I’ll be damned!” 

She sweeps Chuck into a hug, and though he grumbles about it, Chuck does hug her back. She lets him go to look at him, then hugs him again.

“Charlie, you got so big! Lookit you! You’re all grown up and actually legal and you’re still cute as a button! We missed you so much!”

Raleigh’s bracing himself against the wall and laughing loud enough that he’s sure to be interrupting ongoing classes, but he can’t help but be amused at the look on Chuck’s face. 

“Ms. Zip,” another voice says, firm, but deeply amused. “I’ll ask you again not to physically harass former students, no matter how cute, or legal, they are.”

The new woman is in her late fifties, small, and terrifying. She’s wearing a green shirt and black skirt, and all of her hair has been piled on top of her head in a severe bun.

“Oh, but Dean Scottson, look! It’s Charlie Hansen! You remember Charlie Hansen!” 

Ms. Zip turns Chuck around and presents him like a stuffed toy to the dean of the school. Raleigh has slid down to the floor, and can barely breathe.

“I do, in fact, remember Mr. Hansen. He has an appointment with me this morning about enrolling his own ward at our school.”

Dean Scottson says this with a smile as a look of dismay folds over Chuck’s face. 

“Oh, Charlie!” Ms. Zip yells, pulling him back into a hug. “You’ve got sprogs! Why do you have sprogs?! Christ on cheesy crackers, Charlie! I know you know how to put a glove on and not ruin some girl’s best years!”

Raleigh starts to cry and Chuck lashes out with his foot.

“I did not get some tot pregnant! Her name is Avis, and she’s Irish, and I adopted her!”

“Well, why didn’t you say so, Charlie-boy? Caused all kinds of confusions, haven’t you?”

“God, you make me want to tear my hair out!” Chuck says.

“Good,” Ms. Zip calms and backs off. “Now you know how we felt as your teachers.”

Chuck makes a move like he wants to strangle the woman, but doesn’t; Raleigh imagines that murdering one of the staff could hamper Avis’s chances of enrollment. Chuck stuffs his hands into his pockets and looks like the sullen teenager that he probably was, never mind his age of twenty-two. Raleigh heaves himself off of the floor, still trying to catch his breath and failing, and as soon as he has his feet under him, Ms. Zip thrusts her hand in his direction and introduces herself,

“Meredith Zepliner; I go by Zippy. Please tell me you’re Charlie’s boyfriend, fiancé, husband, significant other, lover, or something that tells me he hasn’t spent the last six years cooped up and socializing only with Jaegers. Holy cow, you’re Raleigh Becket.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Raleigh says and shakes her hand.

“Ha! Two seconds in and he’s already got better manners than you, Charlie!”

“Ms. Zip,” the dean says, still very clearly amused, “I think it time you returned to your class.”

“They’re a bunch of finger painting fifteen year olds. How much trouble could they get into?” Zippy says, but she does begin to back away from the group. “You better stop by and see me before you go, Charlie boy. Don’t go disappearing like you did last time.”

“I wouldn’t step foot in your classroom if you paid me, Zip.”

Zippy laughs as she jogs off down the hall.

“She is quite excited that you’ve returned,” the dean says as if the previous display had been boring and monotonous. 

“You don’t say?” Chuck says snidely, and Raleigh elbows him in the side.

“It’s so good to know your attitude hasn’t changed in the slightest,” she says. “I assume you still know where my office is? Many know you spent enough time there.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Raleigh mutters.

Chuck ignores him. They follow Dean Scottson into her office, though they have to stop and let the ancient secretary, Mrs. Armstrong, greet and hung Chuck. Once the tiny, old woman has settled back into her desk, Scottson lets the two of them claim seats in her office. It’s a homey place, warm colors, and practical furniture, and awards, for both the school and Dean Scottson, line the walls. She sinks into her own chair behind a large desk, dark stained desk. 

“We’ve reviewed your daughter’s academic profile,” Scottson says, getting right to business. “She has top marks from qualified tutors, can read well above her expected level, and seems to be interested in furthering her education. She’s a bright young lady.”

“Yeah, she is,” Chuck says, like the compliment is something he truly takes to heart. Raleigh wonders if Dean Scottson took the role of a serious female figure in Chuck’s life after his mother passed away.

“Are you wishing to house her on campus?”

“No,” Chuck says. “We’re still living in the Shatterdome right now; haven’t had time to find another place yet, but…”

“We’re hoping to find a place in Sydney,” Raleigh says when Chuck trails off. “We’ll be picking her up and dropping her off until then.”

“That sounds fantastic,” Scottson says, and Raleigh can almost predict how she feels about parents that board their children even if her school does provide the service. “Now, the final step to enrollment is the blind interview. Ms. Feeley will need to pass an assessment with three of the teachers we have on staff, and convince them that she is of exceptional academic merit, and can compete with the course studies she will be assigned. The teachers selected for the interview will be previously notified of Ms. Feeley’s first name, unweighted GPA, and the final grades produced by her tutors from the last eight terms. Do you find this acceptable?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Chuck says. 

“Good. Should Ms. Feeley pass the interview and her enrollment pass the final stage, she will begin after the coming three day break. Given what her files states, I can see no problem with catching her up and letting her continue on in the correct year with others of her age. Now, I am unsure of your schedules, but I would like some lunch. Would you care to join me?”

“We’d love to, Dean Scottson,” Raleigh says, and just like that the meeting is over, and Avis is well on her way to enrolling in the poshest school Raleigh could have imagined.

***

“Hand me three quarter bit, ptichka(1),” Sasha says as she throws her hand out from under the three ton diesel engine she’s working on. 

Avis dips her hand into the tool box by her hip and hands Sasha a tool without looking up from the book resting on her knee. She flips the pages using her knuckles so the grease on her fingers doesn’t leave smudges. 

“Ptichka,” Sasha says, waving her hand between Avis’s face and the pages of her book with the new tool in her hand, “this is a hammer.”

“Oh,” Avis says, looking between the words on the paper and the tool in Sasha’s hand. She exchanges the hammer for the three quarter bit. “Sor'y, Sasha.”

“What are you reading that is so razvlekatel'nyy(2), little bird?”

“ _The Illustrated Man_ ,” Avis says. “I’s by th' same man w'o wro'e _Fahrenheit 451_.”

“And is so great that you cannot pay attention to engine?” the Russian teases.

“Well,” Avis says, looking back to the pages of the book. “Some ki's jus' fed their paren's t' a lion, 'cept it wa'n’t a real lion; i' was jus' a room pretendin' i' was a lion.”

“How can room pretend to be lion, ptichka? It is just room.”

“I’s a nursery,” Avis says. “An' th' nursery’s job is t' give the children anythin' they wan', an' they wan'ed their paren's dead, so th' room killed them.”

Sahsa pulls herself out from under the engine, wiping her hands of the grease the best she can.

“Come,” Sasha says. “We get lunch, and you tell me story from beginning. We figure out why room is also lion.”

“C'n I 'ave jello?”

“You can have jello, ptichka.”

***

Chuck is pulling one of Raleigh’s ugly sweaters over his head when broad hands touch his waist and slip up his ribs. The fingers are rough and callused just liked his, and the comparison is kind of creepy when he thinks about it because why does he want to think about his own hands when he can think about Raleigh’s? His head slides through the stretched out collar, and Raleigh kisses him on the mouth, soft and lingering, and sweeter than he usually is.

“Did you mean it?”

“Mean what?”

“When you said you wanted to look for a house in Sydney? You really want to make this permanent?”

“Mate,” Chuck says, hauling Raleigh closer so he can’t tell that the smile on his face is a horrible mix of happy and heartbroken. “This was already permanent.”

Raleigh pushes him over on the mattress, which irks Chuck, it really does, but Raleigh makes up for it by snuggling into him and lining his throat with kisses, running his nose up the line of Chuck’s jaw, and acting like the cat the American really is on the inside. Chuck takes the affection he can get; in the beginning, back before Pentecost moved the PPDC out of Hong Kong, when they were still recovering from dropping the payload into the Breach, Raleigh had been touch-wary. He’d hold Chuck’s hand like his life depended on it, but if anyone else, a nurse, Mako, even Chuck sometimes, tried to get his attention by patting him on the arm, clapping him on the shoulder, fixing his IV, Raleigh would react as if it hurt. Chuck assumes that’s what happens when you spend five years in the Alaskan wilderness alone and hating yourself: you might just come to the conclusion that everyone else hates you, too.

Even though this bed is bigger than the one they shared in Hong Kong, they use the same amount of space, preferring to keep close rather than drift apart. Chuck threads his fingers through Raleigh’s hair, plays with the blonde strands, and makes the mention that maybe it’s time for a trim. Raleigh just grumbles and ignores him. They drift about in the quiet of the room; there’s no construction going on in the Shatterdome to disturb them, no late night emergency calls, not even Avis. She’s been fixated on the Kaidonovskys for the last two days and has yet to let the fascination wane.

“What you said,” Chuck whispers into Raleigh’s hair, “when we were outside Braxton-Parish: did you really never graduate?”

Raleigh’s fingers dig into Chuck’s spine; it’s a harsh pressure, but he can’t say it hurts.

“No,” Raleigh says finally. “Trespasser hit when I was fifteen. When everyone panicked, we decided that we wanted to send Jazmine to school on the other coast, but it was expensive so Yancy and I picked up every job we could. He’d already graduated, and I just stopped going.”

The American readjusts, pushes his hips into Chuck’s, grinds his face against his throat.

“I got a GED when I joined the PPDC, though. Had to.”

“It’s not like I give a damn,” Chuck says. “I just never thought about it. Never had a reason to.”

“I’ll try to take that as a compliment,” Raleigh huffs.

“It was, you bloody jackass.”

***

On the fifth day after the interview, and twelve days before it airs on international television, Chuck and Raleigh take Avis to Braxton-Parish for her interview. She’s sulky, but also kind of excited, and annoyed at being forced to attend an actual school when she has so far only been taught by individual tutors. Chuck makes her put on real clothes, a navy blue and white polka dotted dress with a grey sweater, but Avis refuses to put on any other shoes than her scuffed up, steel toed work boots. Raleigh watches the fight from the safety of their kitchen table; after Chuck burned himself while he and Raleigh were arguing, they no longer allow bad attitudes in their small kitchenette. Eventually Chuck has to give in and let her wear them, or they’ll be late to the interview, and late, by Braxton-Parish standards, is an automatic failure. 

Even with the delay, Avis is twenty minutes early for the interview. Dean Scottson joins them at the door, and introduces herself to Avis. For all that the Irish girl was in a tif earlier in the morning, she is nothing but sunshine and happiness for the dean. It worries Chuck that her moods change so quickly; he doesn’t want to think on Avis being such an accomplished liar. Dean Scottson asks Avis if she is ready for her interview, to which Avis nods, but then halts before she can take a full step away from Chuck. She tugs on his pants leg, which she hasn’t done in years, and he kneels down beside her.

“You’ll do great, sweetheart,” Chuck says. 

“Ducky, wha' if they don’ like meh?”

“Avis Oswyn, who in the world couldn’t like you?”

She smiles at him, shy at first, but it grows to near bursting, and let’s go of his pants. Chuck stands back up and he and Raleigh watch Avis walk down the hall with Dean Scottson. When the dean engages her in conversation, Avis answers readily, hands animated and arms moving. When she shrugs her shoulders as part of an answer, her sweater bunches around her shoulders and Chuck recognizes the shape underneath.

“Did you pin Avis’s Jaeger patches to her back?”

“Yes,” Raleigh says, sly grin curving his lips.

***

“Ducky!” 

Avis is walking quickly down the hall, practically skipping, swinging her arms in stride. Dean Scottson is following her at a more resigned pace, but the look on her face says she is as amused at Avis as Chuck and Raleigh are. Max barks and wobbles down the hall to meet her half way.

“She calls you ‘Ducky’?” Zippy questions. 

The teacher had come to join them in the hallway during her lunch break, bearing hot coffee and Tim Tams. Chuck teased her about not providing peanut butter, but when Zip reminded him that she would blow up like a balloon, he shut up. They talked about what the last few years had been like, what with Chuck graduating at fourteen and moving straight on to the Jaeger Academy, then climbing into a Jaeger for the first time at seventeen, adopting Avis, saving the world while Zippy feeds pieces of a biscuit she fetched for Max. Raleigh hasn’t heard Chuck spill his guts like this outside of the privacy of their bedroom, and thinks he might need to reconsider who exactly may have been the mothering figure in Chuck’s teen life.

Avis catches herself around his waist and hugs him, in a much better mood than their morning would have suggested,

“I passed! Ducky, I passed!”

“That’s great, sweetheart!” Chuck says, scooping Avis into his arms even though she’s too big for him to be doing so any more. Raleigh takes the mug out of his hand so that Chuck doesn’t spill it. 

“Dean Sco''son says I ge' t' start in two weeks! She showed meh th' library! Ducky, they 'ave so many books!”

“Alright, alright. Calm down! Don’t tell us everything at once.”

“R'leigh!” Avis leans out of Chuck’s arms, nearly unbalancing him, and into Raleigh’s space. He pecks her on the cheek and she grins. She chirps at Zippy, “Hi!”

“Hi!” Zippy says back. “You must be Avis.”

“Yeh!”

“I’m Zippy; I’m one of the art and foreign language teachers here.”

“Wha' language do ya teach?” Avis asks curiously.

“Mandarin and Cantonese.”

“I c'n speak Mandarin! Jin and Hu have been teachin' me!”

She rattles on with Zippy over Chuck’s shoulder and around Raleigh’s head until neither of them think she’s aware of where she is any more. Dean Scottson is deeply amused by Avis.

“She reminds me of you when you were younger,” she says to Chuck. “You were such a happy-go-lucky spitfire in your adolescence.”

“Chuck?” Raleigh asks, throwing a bit of disbelief into his voice just to piss the other off.

The redhead elbows him, and Raleigh laughs.

“So?” Chuck asks. “How did it go?”

“She did very well, better than you did in your interview,” Raleigh snorts, “She engaged the teachers, kept up with their questions very well. She told them she wanted to be a Jaeger mechanic when she grows up.”

“She might as well be,” Raleigh says. “Avis can run circles around a few of the mechanics we’ve got. She knows her Jaegers.”

“With the elimination of the world’s need for Jaegers,” Scottson says, and it’s really the way that she says it that makes Raleigh’s hackles rise, “a more productive route might be general mechanical engineering. That way she may meet the demand of whatever the world needs.”

Raleigh can’t argue with her logic.

***

On the sixth day after the interview, and eleven days before it goes live, Newt, Raleigh, and Mako are setting up for their first run of the Gottlieb-Geiszler Neural Drift Project on a human subject in the newly equipped lab both doctors were awarded after they agreed to make their permanent laboratory in Australia. Newt makes an effort to explain that the Drift sequences will not change, just how they monitor the brain activity, so there’s no reason to worry about brains melting, or noses bleeding, or blood vessels bursting.

“I wasn’t,” Raleigh says. “But I am now.”

Mako covers her laugh with her hand.

“So?” Newt asks as he seals an electrode to Raleigh’s pulse point. “How did Avis’s interview go?”

“Good. The dean was impressed. She starts in a couple weeks.”

Newt launches into a monologue about how big Avis is getting, and she’s going off to school to make friends on her own, and she’ll be a magnificent student, and Hermann’s baby girl, Winifred, and do not call me Hermann, started walking last week and everything is just moving too fast, and Hannibal doesn’t want to adopt yet, not until business stabilizes, and he just doesn’t have anything but work to concentrate on.

“Newt,” Raleigh says, “how much caffeine have you had today?”

“Too much,” he says, and flips the switch.

***

The interview airs on a Sunday. The Shatterdome shuts down whatever minimal operations are running, and people gather in the commissary, and the recreations rooms, and in personal quarters to see exactly what the world will see of its heroes for the first time in nearly a year. The Rangers, Marshall Pentecost, Tendo, and Avis occupy the recreation room nearest the Jaeger hangar. It’s an alright room with a decent sized TV and more than enough cushions to accommodate them. They’re the only ones to take seats within; the rest of the crews and personnel are a little frightened of what Pentecost might do should anything other than what he approved of air.

They’re comfortable; no one, except the Marshall, is in any kind of uniform, all dressed in jeans, and tshirts, and pajamas. The Weis are sprawled on the floor, Hu and Jin lay shoulder to shoulder with Cheung across their backs. Sasha and Aleksis share an arm chair that someone brought from Hong Kong; Raleigh recognizes the look on Aleksis’s face when he sits on the broken spring in the seat. Herc and Pentecost are squirreled away in the corner, sharing a drink from an unlabeled bottle and daring the rest of the room to vie for some. Raleigh, Mako, and Chuck are on the only couch in the room, comfortable in sharing the one thing they really have in common: Raleigh. Avis is in Raleigh’s lap listening to him read from another story in _The Illustrated Man_. 

The room is quiet and dull, and most of the sound has faded away as the others listen to Raleigh read. His voice is calm, and soft enough to be meant for Avis alone, but it holds a presence that few others have. His accent seems to be misplaced, but at the same time it fits just like the rest of them don’t. When the television flickers to life and the introduction peppers through the speakers, Hu places the interview on pause until the story is done and the book is put away.

***

The day after the interview airs, Avis has her first day of school.

Her uniform fits perfectly, though Raleigh has to remind Chuck that a growth spurt is soon to come, and they’ll have to buy uniforms all over again. The navy blue blazer fits over her white shirt and tie, and the skirt touches her knees. And, again, Avis refuses to wear anything other than her worn out, steel toed leather boots. Chuck huffs a sigh, tells her that she won’t be getting another pair when she out-grows those, which Raleigh knows is a lie, but doesn’t argue.

“Pin mah patches on, please,” Avis says, putting the two pieces of fabric and stitching in his hands. 

“We need to get you new patches,” he says as he pins them to her back, fingering the fraying edges.

“No, than's,” Avis says. “These’re good luck.”

“Ready to go, sweetheart?” Chuck asks from the door.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t forget your satchel,” he says.

Raleigh watches her walk out the door with a brand new messenger bag sitting on her hip. When Mako had asked to take Avis back to school shopping, neither he nor Chuck had thought that she would allow the Irish girl to pick out anything too, er, Jaeger-ish, but when they had returned, Avis didn’t own a thing that didn’t sport at least the sigils of each of the Operation Pitfall Jaegers. Chuck sighed, and Raleigh laughed, but neither of them said anything.

The ride to Braxton-Parish is quiet. Whatever questions are thrown her way, Avis answers with short, to the point sentences. Raleigh holds Chuck’s hand between their seats, acknowledging but not flaunting his want of comfort as he sends his daughter off for her first day of school; Chuck and Avis haven’t spent a lot of time apart since the PPDC was moved to Australia. Raleigh just figures that he’ll have to keep Chuck preoccupied. 

When they arrive at the school, Raleigh let’s Chuck walk Avis to the door. They have to wade through a small crowd of all-aged students, but Avis seems adamant that he take her all the way to the door. He watches Chuck kneel down beside her, and he knows he’ll never know what words are exchanged, but a smile lights up Avis’s face, and almost, but not all, of her hesitation evaporates. Chuck gets back into the Jeep with a sigh.

***

Four days after the interview airs, Mako storms into their room after they’d dropped Avis off at school and demands that they dress. Both Chuck and Raleigh are in bed again, covered, but for all intents and purposes, naked. Chuck squawks, but it’s more from surprise than lost modesty. Raleigh doesn’t falter; the buzzing in his head, the renewed awareness of Mako’s presence has grown stronger since the Gottlieb-Geiszler test project started. It isn’t a constant Drift, not like some people romanticize, he isn’t always in Mako’s head, but sometimes he can catch that brief wift of content, or amusement, or, more often than not, annoyance. The point, Chuck will later tell him, is that Raleigh knew she was coming and didn’t warn him. She tosses three pamphlets on the bed and tells them that they have an appointment in an hour. She walks back out of the door with a huff and roll of her eyes. 

***

When Chuck walks out of their bathroom twenty minutes later, Raleigh has to laugh. The Aussie is wearing a dusty blue looks-like-it-but-not-really vintage Gypsy Danger shirt that matches Mako’s. It’s a tight fit, like it has already shrunk in the wash, or it was simply the biggest size available. Raleigh won’t mention the companion shirt in Striker Eureka green buried in the bottom of a drawer.

“What?” Chuck asks, holding his hands out to his sides. “You don’t like it?”

“I love it,” Raleigh says, hauling him in by the collar for a kiss. It’s long, and drawn out, and dirty, and Raleigh has the sappy-romantic thought that if all he did for the rest of his life was kiss Chuck, he’d be happy.

“I know about the one in the drawer, Becket,” Chuck says slyly. “Don’t think you’re hiding that from me.”

Raleigh has the decency to blush.

***

The man waiting for them on the corner of Westberk and Collier is tall, taller than Chuck by any means, and slim, though is retrospect they both agree that he filled out his suit pretty nicely. He’s well put together, clothes pressed and shoes shined, and Chuck thinks he looks like a twink(3), which isn’t really his thing, but he refrains from saying so to the man’s face. He greets them like he would any other person on the street, no use for over exuberance, or ‘thank you’s for saving the world.

“Elijah Cramer,” he introduces himself, and lets them do the same like they weren’t just on the news a few days ago.

“Miss. Mori says you’re looking for something family sized,” he starts as he guides them down Westberk. “In the city, but close to the Shatterdome?”

“That’s about the size of it,” Chuck says.

“Walking distance to Braxton-Parish, maybe?” Raleigh says.

“’d be nice.”

“We’re twenty-three blocks from Braxton-Parish now,” Cramer says. “I’ve got two properties to show you today. If you’d like, you can give me a better idea of what to look for, and I can reevaluate the area.”

“Sounds good,” Raleigh says.

***

“I didn’t like the kitchen,” Chuck says as he and Raleigh settle into a table in the Shatterdome commissary. 

“Not big enough?”

“No. And you didn’t like the bedrooms.”

“They were too small.”

“You didn’t like the carpet either.”

It takes Raleigh a moment to realize that Chuck’s teasing. It’s still a small enough rarity for Chuck to engage in any kind of public affection that sometimes Raleigh doesn’t catch it right off. The blonde hooks his foot around his boyfriend’s ankle under the table and pulls him a little closer.

“Look at us,” he says wistfully. “We are disgustingly domestic.”

“What? No,” Chuck says unconvincingly. “We’re Rangers; we don’t do domestic. We kill Kaiju and save cities.”

“Chuck, we’re buying a house.”

“We’ve got to have some place to live.”

Raleigh pushes his food around on his tray.

“Goddamnit,” Chuck says, fork clattering to the tabletop. “We are so fucking domestic.”

“Glad you agree.”

“Oh, kiss ass, Becket.”

***

“DUCKY!” 

Chuck and Raleigh can spot Avis waving her hands and jumping to clear the other children’s heads. She’s got a large sheet of paper in her hand, and is barely avoiding hitting those around her in the head as she bobs and weaves to their Jeep. Her shirt is half untucked, and she has a smudge of yellow paint of her face, and Chuck wonders who thought it was a good idea to let Avis anywhere near paint, washable or no. She’s grinning though, and that’s the good part; Chuck was so unsure that she would get on with anyone at the school, students and teachers both, that he’d kept himself from sleeping.

“Hah!”

Raleigh intercepts Avis’s path to Chuck and scoops her up into his arms. She squeals, kicking to get away from him before she dissolves into laughter. By the time they both calm down, Avis is half hanging out of Raleigh’s arms, red faced and in good spirits.

“Hi, R'leigh,” she laughs. 

“Hi, Avis. How was school?”

“Look!” she turns the sheet of paper over and shows Raleigh the illustration she’s done in paint. 

Raleigh knows what it is, can clearly tell, but he feels like he has to ask anyway,

“Is that what I think it is?”

“I’s an I-19 Plasmacaster!” she says, turning the page around to show Chuck. 

He takes the paper from her hands and turns it over to see it correctly, and a considering look crosses over his face, “I’ll be damned. It is an I-19. Nice job, sweetheart.”

“You’ve got to remember to show Herc and the Marshall when we get back,” Raleigh says. “They’ll love it.”

“We wer' suppo'ed t' paint somethin' we though' was beau'iful in class. Zippy wan'ed to hang it on the wall, but I wan'ed t' brin' it home.”

“We’ll hang it somewhere at home,” Raleigh says. “Ready to go?”

“Avis! Avis!”

Another student comes running out of the crowd, a boy maybe the same age or younger than Avis, with dark brown hair and green eyes. His uniform jacket is a little bit too big and keeps falling off of one shoulder, and the glasses perched on his nose seem a little too wide for his face. He’s clutching a notebook with Striker Eureka on it, and when he comes to a halt in front of the three, he can’t take his eyes off of Chuck.

“You forgot your notebook,” he says faintly.

“Put me down,” Avis tells Raleigh, patting him on the shoulder.

Raleigh flips her back to her feet, keeping a hand on her skirt and her modesty intact. She bounces over to the boy, and plucks the notebook out of his still hands.

“Thank you, Lyle,” Avis says. 

She swishes her gaze between newly dubbed Lyle and Chuck. 

“This is Ducky,” she says. “He’s mah dad.”

***

“I like Lyle,” Raleigh says as the three of them make their way back to the Shatterdome.

“He’s nice,” Avis says. “Coyote Tango is his favorite, bu' he likes Striker, too.”

“You’ll have to let the Marshall know.”

“How was your maths test? First one, yeah?” Chuck asks.

“I did good. We start'd trig’nomtry today. I dunno if I like it.”

“No one likes trigonometry,” Chuck says.

***

“I can’ find Granpa Herc,” Avis says as she reenters their room. 

Max wobbles over to her and rolls onto his back to beg for some tummy love. She does as pleaded while Chuck clears off the rickety table shoved into their kitchenette.

“Sit down, and do your homework,” he says, “and I’ll go find Granpa Herc.”

“Alright. Do ya thin' R'leigh will read me mah lit'rature assignment 'gain?”

“I’m sure he will if you ask nicely. Leave the door open, sweetheart? It’s been too stuffy lately.”

“Okay, Ducky.”

Chuck wanders down the hall towards the main offices of the Shatterdome. Its gets nicer the farther he gets from the living quarters and Chuck assumes it’s because these are the halls that politicians and officials see when they have meetings with the Marshall and his dad; he bears no grudges for their jobs. It’s a Friday afternoon, so most of the staff has gone home early, as is the privilege now that the world isn’t ending, but he still wanders by the occasional straggler. He bumps his fist against Pentecost’s office door, and when no answer comes he pops his head inside. It’s just as Spartan and clean and terrifying as is was in Hong Kong, and is devoid of both the Marshall hand his father. His dad’s office is just a hallway over, and is the next logical step when neither of them are in Pentecost’s. 

His dad’s office has always been messier, an organized hodge-podge of orderly chaos, and most of the time Herc leaves the door standing open. It’s closed now, and the blind for the single window is drawn. Chuck rolls his eyes, knows that Herc doesn’t have anything to hide, and even if he did he could leave the door standing open and no one would enter for fear of the older pilot’s wrath. Chuck fears no such thing as he swings the door open without announcing his presence.

On the other side of the door is a scene he’s much rather erase from his mind, but it isn’t completely unexpected. Pentecost is leaning on Herc’s side of the desk, with Herc standing between his knees. It’s by no means inappropriate, but the hand Pentecost has on his father’s hip speaks loudly to what they were just doing. His father is scarlet, weather from embarrassment or anger, Chuck suspects it’s from the later, and the Marshall merely raises an eyebrow, daring Chuck to speak out against what isn’t really a new discovery. 

“Oh, please,” Chuck huffs. “We all knew this was going on.”

“Chuck –,”

“Save it, old man,” the younger says, waving his hand. “Your grand-sprog’s got a school painting to show you when you can untangle yourself from the Marshall here.”

Herc groans and rubs the bridge of his nose with his thumb.

“’Sides,” Chuck grins, “this means Jin and Hu owe me five hundred quid and that scale from Leahterback they’ve been hoarding.”

***

Tendo and Raleigh are mumbling over coffee when Chuck plops down into the open chair beside them. He pulls a wad of cash out of his pocket, counts out a decent amount and slides it over to the lead LOCCENT technician. The Chinese man doesn’t hesitate to pick up the bills, but does raise an eyebrow.

“What’s this for?”

“Caught them in Dad’s office,” Chuck grins. “That’s your cut.”

Raleigh shakes his head.

***

“He could not see the green of the shore now but only the tops of the blue hills that showed white as though they were snow-capped and the clouds that looked like high snow mountains above them. The sea was very dark and the light made prisms in the water. The myriad flecks of the plankton were annulled now by the high sun and it was only the great deep prisms in the blue water that the old man saw now with his lines going straight down into the water that was a mile deep.

“The tuna, the fisherman called all the fish of the species tuna and only distinguished among them by their proper names when they came to sell them or to trade them for baits, were down again. The sun was hot now and the old man felt it on the back of his neck and felt the sweat trickle down his back as he rowed.” (4)

Chuck runs his fingers through Raleigh’s hair when he pauses between paragraphs, brushes the pad of his thumb over the back of his ear. Avis is tucked between them, half curled up and dozing in her duck pajamas. It’s been a quiet night, soft and muted as they haven’t been in a while. Chuck pulls away from them both, and Avis tries to follow the warmth of his chest before he scoops her into his arms. She latches onto him like a limpet, hanging around his neck and unwilling to let go, and he deposits her in her own bed, pulls the covers up and brushes the hair out of her face.

When he’s content that Avis is out for the night, Chuck returns to Raleigh and their bed, stuffing his feet under the blankets and curling up where Avis had been.

“Keep going,” he says.

“I could just drift, he thought, and sleep and put a bight of line around my toe to wake me. But today is eighty-five days and I should fish the day well.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Ptichka is a Russian affectionate term meaning 'little bird'.
> 
> 2\. Razvlekatel'nyy is the phonetic spelling of развлекательный, the Russian form of 'entertaining'.
> 
> 3\. For those who don't know, a twink, at least in America, is a male who takes on more feminine qualities while still identifying themselves as male. A twink can be any combination of heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. Twink is merely a descriptive of the visible personage.
> 
> 4\. _The Old Man and the Sea_ , Ernest Hemmingway, 1952
> 
> Okay, so I had a bit of trouble with this chapter, plot direction and writer's block and all that jazz. So in order to churn out the next chapter before the new year, I'd like you guys to ask questions. About anything, really. if something sticks out, and you ask a question, it may be what pushes that last chapter to published before the year is out. Thank you guys so much for reading!


	4. doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before

On the first day of eighth grade, Chuck gets a call from the school.

Avis is doing well at Braxton-Parish; she's moved up two grades, and has kept a near perfect score in all of her classes. She's sociable, doesn't antagonize, plays fair, and honest. He'd been worried, really, that she wouldn't be able to keep up, or that the other students, older than she, wouldn't accept her into their grade. It's been the opposite so far, with each of her classes making it blatantly obvious that they expect children to surpass expectations and move beyond what traditional teachers can teach. She's been happy.

So Chuck, for all that he knows this, cannot fathom why Avis would be involved in a fist-fight with another student.

***

"Calm down," Raleigh says as Chuck whips their Jeep around another vehicle.

"I don't want to calm down," Chuck says. "I want to know why Avis was in a fight, and who with, and what for."

"Chuck," Raleigh says firmly, laying a hand on the Aussie's forearm, making the other look at him before he continues, "if you don't calm down, you're not getting out of the car. Avis is a sensible girl. She wouldn't be a fight without good reason, never mind start one."

Chuck takes a deliberate, deep breath and slows the Jeep to a stop. He pries his fingers away from the wheel one by one, careful not to frustrate himself and further his temper. Raleigh moves his hand away, gets out of the car, circles around. Chuck meets him on the sidewalk, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets. There are two policemen shadowing the front doors of the school, and they eye Chuck and Raleigh until the door closes behind them.

The halls of Braxton-Parish are deserted, mid-day classes still being in session, with the exception of three students, one of which is Lyle, and a third policeman. Lyle has a scrape on his chin, and a crack in the glass of his lenses, and is generally disheveled. The other two students are older and show much more wear and tear, including a black eye and bloody nose between them. Lyle waves at them as they pass him to enter the office, but the other two won't look away from the floor.

Avis and the school nurse, Nurse Kellianne, are sitting in front of Mrs. Armstrong's desk, and Kellianne is trying to stop the blood gushing from Avis's nose. She has blood on both of her sleeves, and on the collar of her shirt; Kellianne has commandeered the waste basket from under Mrs. Armstrong's desk and has half-way filled it with bloody napkins. Avis spots them before Nurse Kellianne does, and tries to squirm away from her to get to them. Nurse Kellianne holds her firmly in her seat.

"You will stay put until the bleeding has stopped, Avis Oswyn."

"Bu' mah Ducky," Avis says, voice muffled by the wad of tissues the nurse has pressed to her face.

Nurse Kellianne looks over her shoulder to see Chuck and Raleigh and waves them towards the dean's office.

"The other parents are already here," she says. "You can join them in Dean Scottson's office."

"Is Avis alright?" Chuck asks gruffly.

"Avis will be fine," Kellianne says soothingly, "as soon as her nose stops bleeding, which would happen faster if she'd stay still."

Chuck shoots Avis a look, tells her to stay put, and walks into Scottson's office. Raleigh hangs back for just a moment to reassure Avis that Chuck is not mad at her, so long as she didn't start the fight. Avis pleads that she didn't until the nurse quiets her. Raleigh tells her that they'll talk about it when they get home, and follows Chuck into the other room.

There isn't another male parent in Dean Scottson's office. The guest list consists of four women, three of which look stuffy, and overpriced, and able to afford Braxton-Parish without their child having the academic background. The fourth woman is dark haired, dark eyed, and dressed like she does a lot of traveling in flat, sensible shoes, a plain shirt, jeans, and a leather jacket. She's standing apart from the other women, back facing a corner, and ready to fight.

"Mr. Hansen, Mr. Becket," the dean greets. "Thank you for joining us."

"What's this about?" Chuck asks, jumping straight to the point, but managing to stay polite about it.

"Close the door please, Mr. Becket," she says. When the latch clicks in place, she continues, "Earlier this morning, there was an altercation between five children. Alexa, Kassandra, and Lily began the altercation, later joined by Avis and Lyle."

"I want to know what that Alexa girl did to our daughters," one of the stuffy women interrupts.

"Mrs. Perch, Kassandra has been minimally harmed, but," the dean's voice turned to stone, unyielding and unforgiving, "Kassandra and Lily have placed Alexa in the hospital."

"Please," the second stuffy woman says, "My Lily would never hurt a fly, and if she did, then she must have been provoked."

"Provocation or no," Scottson says, "There is no ground to stab another person with a kitchen knife brought from home."

Chuck's blood runs cold and Raleigh's shoulders bunch under the weight of how serious the situation has suddenly become.

"How did Lyle and Avis become involved in the fight?" the third woman asks, and by the level of her voice Raleigh can tell that maybe he pegged her wrong and she has a solid head on her shoulders.

"According to the children, Avis and Lyle happened upon the altercation on their way to the library. They stumbled into Kassandra and Lily attacking Alexa with a knife. Fearing for Alexa's life, Avis joined the fray whilst Lyle ran to inform a teacher. Who began the initial altercation has yet to be determined as I was unable to speak with Alexa before the ambulance arrived, and rightly so. As of now, Ms. Perch and Ms. Macklemore maintain that Alexa instigated the fight, but it is not quite a story I believe."

"This is outrageous!" Mrs. Macklemore complains. "Our children have been nothing but fine examples at this school, and I'll not tolerate their social and academic besmirchment!"

"I have the records to prove otherwise, Mrs. Macklemore."

"Hold on," Chuck says, stepping between the women, which Raleigh thinks is a bad idea on principle. "Start over. Your two snots," he points at Mrs. Perch and Mrs. Macklemore, "attacked your daughter," he points at the dark haired woman, "so my daughter and Lyle did the right thing by stepping in. Did I get that right?"

"At its most basic, yes, Mr. Hansen," Dean Scottson says.

"Well, Avis is sitting in the next room, trying to stop the river of blood running from her nose, and your little princesses barley have a mark on them; so here's my question: which one of your spawn hit my daughter?"

"Chuck," Raleigh mutters, tugging on the red-head's elbow.

Chuck feels like thunder, large and rolling and making noise, but not yet ready to let go of the anger he's carrying. His daughter has been hurt by another being, on purpose, and he will do what he has to do make whoever did it pay. If that means scaring a few posh socialites into backing off his family, then he doesn't mind.

"Rest assured," Dean Scottson says. "We'll find out. As of right now, the police and Social Services are involved; there _will_ be an investigation into what transpired today, however, until Alexa is coherent enough to give a statement and decide whether or not she wishes to press charges, the case will not move far. This is my verdict: Kassandra Perch and Lily Macklemore are suspended pending an independent investigation by Braxton-Parish. Formal charges or no, two students attacked another in my halls today, and they will be dealt with. Avis and Lyle are both dismissed for the rest of the day; the half day will count as their punishment for being involved in the fight, as policy dictates, and they may return to classes at the beginning of the school day tomorrow."

"This is completely unfair!" Mrs. Macklemore protests.

Mrs. Perch turns on her heel, pushes Chuck and Raleigh out of her way, and slams the door behind her. Mrs. Macklemore follows.

"Well," Lyle's mother says, smoothing down the invisible creases in the skirt of her dress, "I was aware that Avis and Lyle got along swimmingly, but I suppose I didn't realize just how good of an influence she's been."

Chuck blinks at her, unaware of how to take a compliment for Avis while he's still roiling around in a thunder storm, crashing against himself and rumbling in his own ears. He takes a deep breath, nods at the woman, and takes a step back.

"Okay?" Raleigh whispers.

Chuck nods.

"Undoubtedly, the police are awaiting guardians in order to take the children's statements," Dean Scottson says. "Let's join them so we may all continue on with what is left of this Kaiju of a day."

Both of the other women agree, so Chuck and Raleigh turn and head out the door. Avis and Lyle are sitting side-by-side in the secretary's office, Avis with tissues stuffed up her nose, but no more gushing blood. Nurse Kellianne is tending to one of the older girls' bleeding, probably broken, noses, and she's not being particularly kind about it. Avis and Lyle both spring out of their chairs when the door opens and begin talking all at once.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Chuck says over them.

They both quiet, though Raleigh and Chuck can both see the righteous anger burning away in Avis.

"Calmly and one at a time."

"You go first," Lyle says, knocking his elbow against Avis's.

"Lyle an' me was on our way t' th' library," Avis says, and even through his temper Chuck thinks the nervous grammar slip is cute, "an' we heard yellin' an' we turn'd th' corna an' th' two girls was gettin' at Alexa. I like Alexa. She dunnae do anythin' ' ge' 'ttacked fer. But th' blon'e one, th' one wif th' black eye, she was sayin' tha' Alexa had dun brough' it on herself cause she got th' part. I dunno wha' part they was talkin' 'bout, bu' then she was pullin' out this knife from her bag, an' Ducky I coulnae jus' stan' there an' let it 'appen! Alexa needed help!"

"And then I went to go get help," Lyle says when tears start to leak out of Avis's eyes. "I'm no good in a fight, Mr. Hansen, but I had to do something!"

"Now you both listen to me," Chuck says kneeling down in front of them. He puts his hand on Lyle's shoulder and pulls Avis into his chest. "What you both did was very brave. You stood up for someone who needed help, and you stuck by her through the situation regardless of the consequences," he glances back at Lyle's mother, who nods in approval, "and Alexa is alive because of you two. I don't know if the other girls meant to hurt her or not, but she _did_ get hurt, and you two stopped her from ending up dead."

Avis sniffs and shudders into Chuck's chest, and Lyle nods somberly before moving away and joining his mother. Chuck stands up, and Raleigh slips in between him and Avis, scooping her up and settling her on his hip. Avis buries her face in his neck and begins to cry like she would have if her anger hadn't taken the forefront.

"Excuse me."

Chuck and Raleigh both turn to the dark haired woman. She's holding a card out to Chuck. He takes it and reads the title.

"Mally Madeline, Social Services. You're not Alexa's mother?"

"Good as," she says. "I'm her social worker. Alexa was orphaned in the war."

Raleigh nods.

"I wanted to thank you," Madeline says. "Alexa hasn't made many friends since she scholarshiped here. Your Avis and Lyle took to her, but she's always had problems with other kids her age. I'm glad to see that someone here cares enough to keep her from getting hurt."

"We'd like to keep up with Alexa's recovery," Raleigh says, "if that's okay."

"Of course it is," she says. "Let me get a pen."

After locating ink and paper, the social worker takes Chuck's contact information and promises to keep them updated to what's happening. After that, the only thing left is to give their statements.

***

Avis is asleep in the back seat before they're a mile from Braxton-Parish. The day has taken its toll on her and neither Chuck nor Raleigh are anxious to wake her. Raleigh, if he's honest, feels a little numb to the situation. He can't imagine what it would do to them if Avis were hurt; now that he's got them both, his brain refuses to consider any option where he doesn't. He finds himself taking deep breaths, calming the panic that the situation provided from the beginning, but that his Ranger training pushed down. Chuck reaches out and takes his hand, kisses his knuckles, and tries to keeps his eyes on the traffic in front of them.

"You alright?"

Raleigh nods, knows that, while Chuck has the temper, he can keep hold on more panic than is healthy. Chuck is aware of the problem; the back of Raleigh's mind is always whispering at him: _it's only a matter of time before you lose them, too._

"Avis is," Chuck pauses, "she's something else. She's smart and she's bullheaded and she's fearless. She'll stand up for what's right and won't back down. The fight's not all that surprising, really."

"She scares me," Raleigh whispers.

"She scares me, too. I'm always worried she'll do something reckless, something she won't be able to take back, and that terrifies me."

"Like climb into a Jaeger?" Raleigh asks dryly.

"There's no reason for her to," Chuck says firmly. "She won't have to."

"Doesn't mean she won't."

"Doesn't mean she won't," he agrees.

***

Herc and Mako join them for dinner that night. Avis is still subdued, though they've told her that she's not in trouble. She sits at the table and picks at her food before excusing herself to her nightly ritual of a shower and a book. Once she's gone from the table, and Raleigh and Mako have begun to clean off what's left of dinner, Herc turns to his son.

"She's a lot like you, you know?"

"Yeah," he sighs. "Sometimes I wish she wasn't."

"Your mum used to think the same thing about you," the older says. "Angela didn't have any friends in school, she didn't like them and they didn't like her. She cried the first time you brought someone home."

"How did mum not have any friends? Everyone loved her."

"She wasn't your mum when she was younger," Herc says kindly. "She didn't feel like she belonged anywhere; I don't really think she felt like she had a place until you came along."

On the fifth day of eighth grade, Chuck and Raleigh pick Avis up from school and take her to visit Alexa in the hospital. She'd been treated in the Emergency Room of St. Christopher's until she was stable, then transferred to the ICU at Sydney Children's Hospital. Mally Madeline had called the night before and informed them that Alexa had woken up and could do with a visit from someone that wasn't from social services.

The hallways of the Children's hospital are deceptively cheery, brightly painted and amusingly decorated. The receptionist that gives them Alexa's room number is a young woman, and obviously knows who Chuck and Raleigh are, if the hardcore flirting is any indication. The elevator, besides giving Raleigh chills reminiscent of ascending out of Gypsy's ConPod, plays an upbeat tune that is almost worse than typical elevator music.

She's on the sixth floor in a private room. The walls are a dismal white, and the curtains are drawn over the windows so it's muted and smoky inside. Alexa is pale, sickly and breakable in a child's sized bed that still seems to swallow her up, and dark bags shadow her eyes. There's a fluid tube draining milky red liquid from under her gown, nasal tubes hooked around her ears, and her right hand has been casted from her wrist over her elbow. Chuck thinks she looks pathetic.

"Hi, Alexa," Avis says.

Alexa blinks at them, wiggles her finger, but doesn't respond further.

"How're ya feelin'?"

Alexa shrugs, flicks her eyes between Avis and Raleigh and Chuck.

"This is Ducky," Avis says, "an' Raleigh. They're mah paren's."

Alexa smiles weakly.

"Avis," Raleigh says. "Chuck and I are going to go down to the cafeteria. Do you want anything?"

"Nah, than's."

"Alexa, do you need anything?"

The other girl seems a little suspicious that he asks, but she shakes her head.

"We'll be back in a little while, okay?"

"Okay."

Raleigh pulls Chuck from the room, turns him down the hall, and heads back for the elevators. They ride back down to the ground floor in silence, Chuck clenching his fist until Raleigh's fingers slip between his. They turn down a quiet hallway, aware of the single nurse making rounds though each room, weaving in and out of each doorway. Raleigh leans against the wall, takes a deep breath, while Chuck paces the tile.

"I just," Chuck starts. "It isn't – ugh!"

"It isn't fair," Raleigh says. "She seems like a good kid, so why is she the one suffering?"

"Yes."

"Why can't the world get its head on straight, and stop acting like jealous, greedy jackasses?"

"Yes."

"Why can't we take her home and keep her safe since she doesn't have a family of her own?"

"Ye – ," Chuck pauses, halts his footwork, looks at Raleigh. He says quietly, "Yeah."

"Sixteen year-olds are a handful," Raleigh says. "How about we get to know her first?"

"Yeah, alright," Chuck agrees, scuffing the toe of his boot against floor.

"I love you," Raleigh says fondly.

"Shuddup."

***

When Chuck and Raleigh make their way back to Alexa's room, they can hear both girls laughing, loud and bright and unrestricted, from the other end of the hall. It occurs to Chuck that they may be disturbing some of the other wards, but the nurse at the call station just smiles at them warmly and waves them on.

"Your daughter's done Alexa some good," she says. "She hasn't been this lively since she arrived."

The hallway itself seems more welcoming, patients awake and moving and interacting, but the closer they get to the end of the hall, the quieter Alexa's room gets. When they peer past the door jam, Raleigh and Chuck can see Alexa sitting in her bed, joined by three other children, and all of them are watching something on the other side of the room with every ounce of concentration. It's when Avis bursts out of the connecting bathroom that they really understand.

The Irish girl is holding scale models of three of the Jaegers that underwent Operation Pitfall, Crimson Typhoon, Striker Eureka, and Gypsy Danger, and is covered head to toe in toilet paper, some of it colored on and worked into disintegrating shapes. She loosely resembles Slattern, the world's first and only Category 5 Kaiju, tail and all. Cherno Alpha is missing his left arm and head, just like when they left him sitting at the bottom of the ocean, and has been placed on the floor between Avis and Alexa's bed.

"I 'm Slatte'n," Avis roars, and Alexa giggles. "I 'ave come ' eat yer women an' slaughter yer piggies."

Alexa and the other children break down into fits of laughter when Avis growls 'piggies', and Chuck can agree that a playful Avis is a silly Avis is a funny Avis. She parades around the room, losing pieces of her "skin" whenever she catches a corner of a chair or the bed. Chuck and Raleigh watch as Slattern is eventually beaten by the magic rainbow phaser on Crimson's arm, and the chocolate rockets of chaos and destruction in Striker's chest cavity. As Slattern melts to the floor, Avis sheds the toilet paper, springs back up with a finger placed over her upper lip, and howls,

"I am Marshall Pentecost, an' I declare th' Breach closed!"

All four patients applaud the best they can, and Chuck's never been so proud of his daughter.

***

"C'n we come back an' visit Alexa t'morra?" Avis asks as she climbs into the back of the Jeep.

"I can bring you," Chuck says. "Raleigh's got a meeting with the Wonder Twins."

"Tha's no' nice, Ducky," Avis says.

"I know, sweetheart. I'm just joking."

"Wha's th' meetin' fer, R'leigh?"

"Mako and I are going to Drift for them again to help with their research."

"Am I e'er goin' t' Drift wif someun?"

Chuck and Raleigh are both quiet.

"Maybe one day," Raleigh says.

***

On the sixth day of eighth grade, Raleigh and Mako are in the middle of a Drift when Avis gets out of school. After a bit of prodding and poking and promises, they'd conceded to an unconscious Drift so Newt could study the non-physical limits of the connection sustained by the neural Bridge. Newt has been calling it Drift Dreaming, which Hermann viciously shoot down at every mention.

 _When Raleigh and Mako become aware of themselves in the Drift, the only thing around them is each other. The scape beyond them is empty, no sense of direction or gravity or planes of existence to limit them. Their projections are still wearing their test clothes, plain shirts and sweatpants, but the electrodes and sensors are gone. Raleigh reaches out in all directions, tries to touch something, anything, but there is nothing to touch. Mako, following another strand of thought that they can both practically see, reaches out and touches Raleigh._

_The touch is both electrifying and dull at both times; they can feel it in their minds, in their projections, but not in their physical bodies. Mako laughs, touches him again. He can feel her joy as his own, coursing between them like lines of thought and color. Mako hovers toward him, coaxes him into her embrace, and wraps herself around him. She's a cocoon of warmth and acceptance and home. They bleed into each other; pictures and memories form and dissolve and play out and remind them why they stepped into a Jaeger in the first place._

_The barrage of images stops, slows down to a pace that makes more sense, and he can't tell if it's his memory or Mako's. Chuck and Avis are sitting at a table in the Hong Kong Shatterdome, heads bent over a text book and papers. Chuck is helping her with her homework, walking her though each step, being patient like he almost never is with anyone but Avis._

_"Is this your memory or mine?" Raleigh asks as they watch the scene play out._

_"I do not know," she says._

_Raleigh watches himself walk into the commissary, spy Chuck and Avis, and join them. He looks happy, but the scene seems to taint with the bitter taste of want, the desire to be involved, to be included. The feelings are like a punch in the gut, and he knows they aren't his, and the only other option is that they belong to Mako; Mako, who has never been anything less than family, reeks of jealousy._

_She turns her head away from the scene, away from Raleigh, in shame. She has no right to want what her partner has, has no right to grieve over what she feels will never be hers. It may be a side effect of the Drift, a leak between them, but she loves Chuck and Avis just as Raleigh does, but she has no place._

_"Stop," Raleigh says, harsh word scraping the back of his throat._

_The scene stutters to a halt, blinks out of existence, and it's just them again; only them._

_"Mako," Raleigh says, and he lays his hands on her, turns her face towards his, meets her eyes. "Where is this coming from? Is this new?"_

_"I don't – ," she starts._

_"Please don't lie to me. I'm in your head," a smile ghosts over his face._

_"No," she whispers. "It is not new."_

_"How long have you been keeping this from me?"_

_"I don't – I don't know," and it's the sentence that breaks what walls Mako has left._

_Raleigh is flooded with images and feelings for both him and Chuck, and he feels so foolish that he could have over looked something so sizable. In the short span of their time he falls in love and suffers through what he knows cannot be his, and he becomes jealous and ashamed because of it. He is envious of a child, and a partner that is only his, and he sobs as he realizes that this was a slow process for Mako; she'd been in love with them both before they left Hong Kong._

Raleigh jerks awake on the test table, startles Newt away from him, and turns to Mako. She's crying, soft, horrible noises and tears Hermann doesn't know what to do with. He pulls the electrodes from his skin, ignoring Newt's helping hands, and slides from his table to Mako's. He gathers her in his arms, shushes her, pets her hair and tells her that everything will be alright, because it will be.

***

When Chuck and Avis arrive back at their brownstone, both thoroughly exhausted from visiting Alexa in the hospital, there is a note in Raleigh's awful handwriting on the kitchen counter. Chuck reads through it, twice just to be sure, then sets Avis up with her homework; she has ten trigonometry problems and a short story to read for her classes the next day. Once she's settled, Chuck putters around the kitchen for a few moments, pulls a bottle of water out of the fridge and tells Avis that he is going to go join Raleigh in their bedroom. Avis rolls her eye, disgusted as only children are by what their parents do.

In their bedroom, Raleigh and Mako are curled up on the bed, comfortable and together, and asleep. Chuck sheds his shoes, jeans, and jacket and slips in behind Mako, curling around and caging her in. Raleigh wakes up, just barely, just enough to realize that it's Chuck with them on the mattress, and he pulls them both in closer. As right as Raleigh feels wrapped in his arms at night, Mako doesn't feel wrong.

***

"Ducky," Avis says, poking her father in the ribs.

Chuck huffs, pushes her hand away.

"Ducky," she says again, poking at him more insistently.

"What?" he asks, groggy and sleep hazed.

"Wha's fer dinner?"

"Dinner?"

"Yes, Ducky. I'm hungry."

Chuck pulls away from the pile that he Raleigh and Mako have become, and sits up on their bed. The room has darkened, dusk bleeds through the shades and paints the walls with light that isn't really there. He glances over at the alarm clock on his bedside table, rubs his eyes, looks again. It's seven in the evening, so he's been asleep for a few hours. Avis has changed out of her school uniform and into her Jaeger tech jumpsuit, which is on the verge of getting too small.

"Have you finished your homework?"

"Yeh. Wha's fer dinner?"

"Let's go find out, sweetheart."

Chuck slides off of the bed, careful not to wake Raleigh and Mako, and herds Avis out into the hallway, snagging his pants off the floor as he goes. They trudge back to the kitchen, Chuck falling over his own two feet as he missteps on the stairs, and Avis laughs at him.

"Is Mako okay?" Avis asks as they begin to look through the cabinets.

"She will be," Chuck says. "She's just having a rough time these days."

Avis begins to hand Chuck canned vegetables from the cabinet, demanding soup. It's no work at all to compile them into a pot and set them to simmer. Chuck has moved away from the stove, and is checking over Avis's homework when she asks,

"Is it 'cause she's in love wif you an' R'leigh?"

"W – what?" Chuck stutters out.

"Mako's rough time," Avis says. "Is it 'cause she's in love wif you an' R'leigh?"

"What makes you think that she is?" Chuck asks, setting his daughter's homework aside and focusing on Avis.

"When she looks at you, an' at R'leigh," she hesitates, then continues, voice quiet, "she looks like Ma when she tal'ed 'bout mah Da. Sometimes she looks like she misses you, even if you're there wif her."

"You, Avis Oswyn," Chuck says, pulling her into a hug, "are an unbelievably perceptive child."

***

On the tenth day of eighth grade, Raleigh, Chuck, and Mako are all summoned to Marshall Pentecost's office. Mako is reasonably hesitant, what with this thing between them only being days old, though she knows her father will not forbid them from continuing. Raleigh and Chuck just want to get the scolding over with, both familiar with waiting outside their superior officer's door like troubled teenagers in high school. It isn't truly a big deal, but none of them can keep from throwing something at Tendo when he mentions it later that day.

The Marshall's office is the same as it's always been: Spartan, clean, and occupied by Herc Hansen. Pentecost is sitting in his chair, and Herc is leaned against the desk; they're discussing something quietly, almost intimately, and it makes Chuck and Mako wonder how they never realized this about their fathers before.

"Marshall, Dad," Chuck says in greeting, the first one to break the ice, "Anyone else walk in on you two yet?"

Mako snorts, and Raleigh reaches around her to punch Chuck in the shoulder.

"What? It was just a question!"

"Pipe down, Hansen," the Marshall says. "Any of you want to explain what went on in the test lab?"

Mako shuffles back and forth until Raleigh calms her with a hand on her shoulder; it seems that emotions aren't the only things that have been leaking through the Drift. Chuck rolls his eyes.

"Giezler put them under for a Drift," Chuck starts when neither of them speaks up. "You'll have to drag the rest out of them."

"There are no secrets from your Drift companion," Mako says quietly. "There have been too many between Raleigh and I."

"We're working on it," Chuck says.

Pentecost looks over to Raleigh, who's been quiet so far. He looks exhausted, bags pulling under his eyes and relief sagging his shoulders.

"Do you have anything to say, Ranger Becket?"

"What's there _to_ say, Marshall?" he asks. "Mako and I, we just…"

"They go together," Chuc says. "Always have, and maybe Mako and I can't stand each other sometimes, but it's something we're willing to put aside."

***

"How long have our kids been adults, Stacker?" Herc whispers into the other man's skin.

"For a while now, I think. Probably longer than we realize."

Stacker kisses him softly, and Herc never thought a touch could feel like worship, not after Angela. It isn't something he likes to think about, but the comparison is there. He loves them both; at different times in his life, and in different ways that are so, so similar, but he does love them. Angela belonged to the sun, bright and breathtaking. Stacker and he, they belong in the dark, in the shadows no one can see through. It isn't shame, they decide; it is the conscious decision to keep what is theirs, theirs.

Herc shifts his hips, throws a leg over Stacker's. The way his skin drags across his lover's still drives him crazy, but that's not what this night is about. This is their celebration in each other that they won. They survived. There is nothing in the world that isn't or couldn't be theirs. This is their silent prayer that neither they nor the future generations will be given such trials again. This is their coming to terms with their children leaving the nest after a much delayed start. This is when they admit that it is time to give the world away.

***

On the thirteenth day of eighth grade, Alexa has welcomed both Chuck and Raleigh into her hospital room. She's a bit flustered to have them there, but Raleigh can't tell if it's because they're Avis's parents or because Alexa thinks of Chuck like the moon in the sky. It all becomes clear when Avis gets fed up of Alexa being shy and announces that all the older girl wants is for Chuck to sign her Striker Eureka trading cards. Alexa is embarrassed, and throws her pillow at Avis in order to hide her blushing cheeks. Chuck demands that she hand them over, and he signs all five of them with a silver Sharpie fetched from the nurse's station down the hall.

Once they've relaxed, and the cards have been tucked away, and the marker returned, Avis asks a question they've all really been avoiding.

"How come Kassandra cut inta you, Alexa?"

Alexa looks down at her broken arm, fiddles with the blanket in her lap, pushes tawny hair out of her face.

"I auditioned for the orchestra," she says quietly. "I'm first chair violin, and I got the solo. The doctor says I'll be able to play again, but it may take a while, some physical therapy maybe."

***

On the twentieth day of eighth grade, Alexa leaves the hospital. She's still stitched together and sore, but she's been in a brighter mood since Avis has made her place in Alexa's daily routine. She doesn't like going back to her foster home, and she tells Chuck and Raleigh and Mako as much, but they're not bad people, they just aren't for her. Chuck slips his phone number into Alexa's pocket when he thinks Raleigh isn't looking and tells her to call any time she needs a break.

She returns to school on the twenty-second day of Avis's eighth grade year. She receives more positive feedback than she had expected, both from her teachers and peers. The orchestra tutor presents her with a large bouquet of wildflowers and lilies; Alexa almost breaks down into tears. Avis and Lyle shush away the other students and teachers when the attention begins to over whelm her, and Alexa has never been so grateful for bullheaded friends.

***

On the twenty-fifth day of eighth grade, Kassandra Perch and Lily Macklemore are officially expelled from Braxton-Parish after the independently contracted private investigator determines that the attack on Alexa was pre-meditated. Alexa's social worker, Mally Madeline, meets with both Kassandra's and Lily's lawyers; Alexa agrees not to press charges so long as her hospital bills, and her school tuitions, are paid in full. She may or may not have also demanded a brand new, top of the line violin.

***

Life continues in the Becket/Hansen/Mori/Feeley household. Mako falls into place like she's never ben anywhere else, and Avis accepts her as one of the family with a strange sort of relief at having another female in the house. Raleigh, Chuck and Mako are kept busy by the Shatterdome, wading through paperwork, and rearranging funds and supplies to keep the PPDC functioning, and Avis is kept busy with schoolwork, Alexa, and Lyle. It takes the lot of them two days to notice that Stacker and Herc have bought the brownstone three doors down.

The Kaiju business stabilizes, and Hannibal Chau finally makes the grand move to Australia. Newt floats on a high for three weeks, no matter what is thrown his way. He and Hannibal are still cruising strong, both too in love and hardheaded to let someone like the other slip away just because Newt spends a few nights in the lab or Hannibal comes home with occasionally bruised knuckles. They buy a house, and the place is surprisingly homey, considering neither of them have the best taste; it's across the street from the Pentecost/Hansen home.

Hermann, his wife Vanessa, and their darling girl Winifred, have yet to find a permanent place, siting need for space to move around in now that Winifred is walking and babbling and starting to grow. Newt gives them a hard time about not checking out Shatterdome Street, as Newton has taken to calling Elbor Road, the block where they've settled. Raleigh flings a rubber band at the scientist the one time he calls it that in front of the Ranger. Vanessa tells him to take his soliciting elsewhere because she will raise her baby nowhere that is not perfect. Hermann can't disagree.

***

On the one hundred-fourteenth day of eighth grade, Raleigh, Chuck, Mako, Avis, Alexa, Herc, Stacker, Hermann, Vanessa, and Winifred are all gathered at Newt and Hannibal's for supper and a few bottles of wine; Hannibal insists on the wine. After the food has been eaten and the dishes have been dealt with, Avis and Alexa herd Winifred into the living room and entertain themselves by reading and telling stories, as has become the habit. Alexa has been out of her cast for a few weeks, and produces her woefully begotten violin when the voices wane and the others start to trickle back home for the night.

Hermann and Vanessa take their leave first, scooping Winifred into their arms and away to bed before she can grow grumpy. Herc and Stacker leave next, off together like Chuck and Mako still don't want to think about. Raleigh Chuckles and tells them that it's been going on for years, since before he left Alaska with nothing but his brother burned into his head and the scars on his arm to show for it. When it's just the five of them left, Avis and Alexa tucked away in another room, music still whispering as softly as their voices, Newt brings a new conversation into the mix that they hadn't really considered.

"Alexa's in the system, right?" Newt asks, pouring himself another round of wine.

"Yeah," Chuck says. "She was orphaned in the war."

"She, uh, are you guys going to adopt her?"

Raleigh, Chuck, and Mako glance at one another.

"Can't say we haven't discussed it. Why?"

"Well, Hannibal and I, we, well, it was my idea."

"We didn't want to apply for her adoption papers out from under you," Hanibal says quietly.

"That is," Mako pauses, "quite a large step."

"He's been talking about it for a couple years now, and it ain't like we can have them ourselves, and the Kaiju ain't tear us apart anymore. I won't say I'm against it. Besides, I like the little shit."

Newt elbows him in the ribs, hard enough to make the bigger man grunt.

"We haven't talked to her social worker yet," Newt says. "We wanted to talk with Alexa first, maybe."

"I think she'd like that," Raleigh says.

Chuck pulls a pen out of his pocket and scrawls a name and number across a napkin. He slides it across the table to the tow of them.

"That's Mally Madeline's number. She's Alexa social worker."

Newton takes their agreement like a blessing.

***

On the one hundred-twenty-second day of eighth grade, Alexa uses her key to the Becket/Hansen/Mori/Feeley household for the first time. School has been out for a few hours, but Alexa is still toting her books and wearing her uniform. She's clutching her violin case to her chest.

"Avis! Avis!"

She finds Chuck in the kitchen first, says a quick hello, and dashes up the stairs to the small office where Avis likes to do her homework on occasion. She slams the door closed behind her and startles the Irish girl out of her concentration.

"You okay, Alexa?"

"Newt and Hannibal took me out for ice cream," she says, like this simple fact would explain her state of panic.

"Yeh?"

"Well, I like them, and they're nice people, and I always thought Newt was funny, but they took me out for ice cream and they asked if it was okay if they adopted me."

Avis places her pencil on the desktop deliberately, as if to keep a large animal from shying away.

"An'?"

"And? AND? That's all you have to say? _AND_?"

"Wha' do ya wan' me t' say?" Avis stands from her chair and rounds the desk, pushing Alexa into one of the other chairs in the room. Alexa drops with a thud, forgetting her bag on the floor, but clutching her case all the tighter. "This is a decision ya 'ave t' make on yer own. Newt an' Hannibal are askin' t' adopt ya, no' take ya out fer a movie. This is a decision tha' will affect th' rest of yer life."

"You," Alexa says hoarsely. "You are the smartest nine year old I have ever met."

"I know," Avis says. "Ya'll ge' used t' it."

***

On day one-hundred-twenty-five, Alexa agrees to have dinner with Hannibal and Newt. She goes about her daily routine: she goes to school, she stays for orchestra practice until four, she takes the bus to the Becket/Hansen/Mori/Feeley household to help Avis with her trigonometry homework, and at six thirty she heads across the street to dinner.

Newt greets her at the door, no notion to pay attention to the lingering question. Hannibal's in the kitchen, standing over the stove and cursing under his breath. The large man is surprisingly good at anything he tries, and it both infuriates and excites Newt to know end. Newt himself is a disaster in the kitchen, recipe's thrown to the side in favor of what 'feels right'. Alexa doesn't know what 'feels right' to the scientist, but TimTams and mayonnaise just don't mix.

"This is really nice of you guys," Alexa tells them. "You don't have to go through all this trouble."

"It's no trouble, kid. We just thought you'd like a quiet night without eight other kids picking food off your plate."

"Nine," Alexa amends with a shrug. "They got a new one yesterday. He's cute, for a baby."

"Jeez," Hannibal sighs. "Isn't there a kid-to-foster-parent ratio?"

"It depends," she says, reaching to the counter and helping him peel an onion to pieces. "The more money you make, the bigger your house, the bigger your house, the more space you've got for kids, the more space you've got for kids, the more kids they give you. It just depends on when you say stop."

"Seems like a waste," he says, "throwing nine kids onto two parents."

"They'd take more, if they could," she comments. "They're good people, and they do what they can, I just…I just don't think they were really meant for kids."

"Some people ain't," Hannibal says quietly.

Dinner is a peaceful affair, tame as tame can be with Newt at the table, but it's enjoyable. Alexa watches them both, waits for the inevitable question whether or not she wants to be adopted. But it never comes. When the three of them are cleaning up, Newt washing, Hannibal rinsing, and Alexa putting away, Alexa says,

"About the other day…"

"We're not rushing you, kid," Hannibal says. "Take all the time in the world to think about it."

"Okay."

Quiet minutes pass.

"I don't want you to choose us," Newt says, hushed and restrained, "just because we chose you. The fit has to be right with both sides if we want this to work. And if you don't think you'll fit, we'll still be here if you need us, we just won't be your legal guardians."

"Okay."

***

Three days before Avis and Lyle's ninth grade year, and Alexa's eleventh, everyone gathers at the Becket/Hansen/Mori/Feeley household for dinner before their schedules become full of school activities again. Raleigh, Hannibal, and Herc control the kitchen, commanding that they be left alone until the food is done or until they call for help. Avis, Lyle, and Alexa are in charge of setting the table and making sure that the floor beneath Winifred's highchair is covered with an old bed sheet; at a year and a few months, the blonde cherub has just entered the throwing food stage of her development. It causes Hermann endless amounts of frustration. Newt, Hermann, and Chuck have been debating the moral boundaries of cloning miniature versions of the Kaiju for research. The argument continues until the Marshall banns all things work-related for the rest of the evening.

Marshall Pentecost divides his time between the kitchen, following instructions and doing as he's told, and amusing Winifred when the other children's minds wander elsewhere. Herc catches the two of them in the foyer, playing catch with a bright green rubber ball. When Herc steps out of the kitchen and leans against the stair rail, Stacker looks up at him, smile tugging on his mouth, and a peaceful look on his face. Winifred squeals, and bounces over to hand the ball to Stacker instead of throwing it.

"Herc," he says, looking up at his lover.

"No," Herc says automatically, turning back the way he came. "Absolutely not. I've got one, and you've got one, and I don't want another."

"But they're cute when they're small," Staker says as if the two were discussing getting a dog.

"Yeah," Herc agrees, "and look how Chuck turned out."

"Hey!" comes the offended shout from the living room.

"Pipe down," Raleigh calls from the kitchen with the specific intent of riling Chuck up. "No yelling in the house, Chuck."

"What was that, Becket? I can't hear you because someone's yelling through the house!"

Mako dissolves into giggles and nearly burns the contents of her pan.

There's a soft knock on the door, loud enough that it could have been heard if the house was quiet, but over the noise of four kids, and three couples and triplet, the announcement has no chance of being noticed. Stacker scoops Winifred into his arms, bouncing her around on his hip, and answers the door. It's a woman he doesn't recognize, shorter than his towering height, but not short, with dark hair and dark eyes; she's carrying several thick manila folders under her arm.

"Hello," she says. "I'm looking for Chuck Hansen, Mako Mori, Raleigh Becket, Newton Geiszler, and Hannibal Chau."

Stacker raises an eyebrow, but opens the door wider so that she may step through the doorway.

"I'll be back," he says, and she agrees to wait patiently.

The living room has become chaos now that Avis, Lyle, and Alexa have finished preparing the dinner table.

"Chuck," the Marshall says, handing Winifred over to Vanessa, then scooping her right back up when the motions for him, "there's a woman here looking for a few of you. She asked for by name."

"Oh," Chuck says, "she's early."

He slips out of his seat, and shuffles through to the foyer and Stacker lets him go.

***

Her name is Mally Madeline, and she's Alexa's social worker. Alexa doesn't panic when she seeys the other woman, but it's a near thing. Thy invite her to dinner, and Chuck slaps a hand over Avis's mouth when she goes to point out that they had set her a place anyway. Dinner with the thirteen of them is by no means a dull event; the table is full of cross talking, and food sharing, and laughing. Even with the surprise visit of her social worker, Alexa loosens up and joins in on the general commotion.

It's a happy affair, and at several points during the meal, Chuck looks over to Raleigh to find the other man reserved, pulled away from the other, but happier than he's seemed in a long time.

***

After Avis, Lyle, and Alexa have begun to recover the kitchen from the mess the adults made cooking, Hannibal pulls three bottles of wine from the cooler, and presents them to everyone.

"Hold on," Madeline says, taking the bottles out of his hands. "We have official business to conduct, and it can't be conducted with open containers of alcohol in the room."

Hannibal huffs, but doesn't disagree.

"Alexa," she calls into the kitchen. "Avis, how about you three come here for a few moments?"

The call their confirmations and slowly trickle into the living room, soap bubbles on their shirts and in their hair, and on their faces. Madeline produces the four manila folders she was carrying earlier, clipped shut to keep all the papers from spilling out.

"This one's yours," she says, handing the first packet to Newt and Hannibal, "and this one's yours," she says to Raleigh, Chuck, and Mako.

"Wha's goin' on?" Avis asks.

"We're adopting Alexa," Newt says as if discussing the new tattoos on his wrist. He signs the paper with a flourish, and hands it to Hannibal, who does the same.

"What?" Alexa asks.

"That is still okay, right?" Newt asks. "I mean you said it was, but now's your last chance to say no before it gets complicated."

"Too late," Hannibal says, handing the papers back to Madeline. "Kid's stuck with us."

"I guess that settles it then," Newt says.

"I suppose it does."

Alexa has to turn her face away to keep the rest of the room from seeing her cry.

"No, none of that," Newt says, standing from his seat and pulling her into a hug. "Being stuck with us isn't something to cry about, not all the time anyway. We can be fun."

As the rest of the room is watching the scene play out before them, Avis turns to Chuck just as he signs his own set of paperwork and passes it to Raleigh.

"What's this then?" she asks.

"Those are your adoption papers," Chuck says.

"Mine? But you said…"

"We had to wait three years to see if we could find your father," he says. "It was three years last week."

"So, even if…I don't have to…"

"You don't have to go anywhere, Avis Oswyn. You can stay right here."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys. As of right now, for the remainder of 2013 anyway, this will be the last bit of the _'need not be let alone'_ universe. After everything settles down forthe New Year, I have a few things I'd like to get done, and one of those things is to do an AU of this set, only with Avis as an adult, and not Chuck's psudo-daughter. 
> 
> Let me know what you guys think of it!
> 
> Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment, if you would.


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